Original Songs (1861) :: :: University of Virginia Library

Acry reach'd the coast that the foeman was coming;
In a moment our brave little isle was alive,
Like bees broken loose in the summer breeze humming,
That darken the air as they swarm round their hive.
Our riflemen foremost, o'er hedge and ditch springing,
With the courage of lions did herald the way;
While over the landscape the bugles were ringing,
And eager as hounds were they all for the fray.

II

But our ships that lay listening, and guarding the ocean,
Went at the first whisper the foe to assail;
And soon our high rocks echoed back the commotion,
As the thunder of cannon was borne on the gale.
And all the brown beach where the billows were dashing
Was cover'd with wrecks, and strewn with the foe,
Which shoreward the wild waves ever were washing:
That was all of the enemy we ever saw.

T. M.